Abstract
BACKGROUND: MammaPrint® is a microarray-based gene expression test cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration to assess recurrence risk in early-stage breast cancer, aimed to guide physicians in making neoadjuvant and adjuvant treatment decisions. The increase in the incidence of invasive lobular carcinomas (ILCs) over the past decades and the modest representation of ILC in the MammaPrint development data set calls for a stratified survival analysis dedicated to this specific subgroup. STUDY AIM: The current study aimed to validate the prognostic value of the MammaPrint test for breast cancer patients with early-stage ILCs. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Univariate and multivariate survival associations for overall survival (OS), distant metastasis-free interval (DMFI), and distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS) were studied in a study population of 217 early-stage ILC breast cancer patients from five different clinical studies. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: A significant association between MammaPrint High Risk and poor clinical outcome was shown for OS, DMFI, and DMFS. A subanalysis was performed on the lymph node-negative study population. In the lymph node-negative study population, we report an up to 11 times higher change in the diagnosis of an event in the MammaPrint High Risk group. For DMFI, the reported hazard ratio is 11.1 (95% confidence interval = 2.3-53.0). CONCLUSION: Study results validate MammaPrint as an independent factor for breast cancer patients with early-stage invasive lobular breast cancer. Hazard ratios up to 11 in multivariate analyses emphasize the independent value of MammaPrint, specifically in lymph node-negative ILC breast cancers.